Although a wide variety of pants closure mechanisms exist, the most familiar of such mechanisms illustrates the purpose of the present invention. Those who wear pants are familiar with the standard routine of donning the pants: when the pants are put on and adjusted to the proper position on the wearer's waist, the fly of the pants is closed and a belt is tightened to the desired tension. Removing the pants is just as routine. Because the belt spans the two flaps that comprise the fly of the pants, the belt must be loosened and the two ends of the belt disconnected from one another. This allows the flaps of the fly to be separated so that the pants may be removed.
This basic procedure for opening and closing pants is repeated many times per day. In most circumstances it is neither a difficult nor inconvenient procedure to follow. However, in some circumstances the process of reattaching and readjusting a belt each time the fly is opened can be difficult. For instance, participants in some sporting activities do not always have two hands available for the amount of time needed to readjust a belt. Consider the example of a rock climber. During long climbs, which may take several days, it will in the normal course of affairs be necessary to occasionally loosen the waistband of the pants. During such times, when perched for instance on a rock wall, it may be undesirable or unsafe to remove both hands from their grip on the wall for any length of time. And it likely is difficult to gain enough freedom of movement to comfortably undo and then attach and readjust a belt. The normal routine of donning a pair of pants under these conditions is thus somewhat more difficult. These same problems are present in many active sports.
But even in non-sporting activities it would be convenient for many people to not reattach and readjust a belt each and every time they don or re-don a pair of pants. This inconvenience is alleviated with a pair of pants that has an elastic waistband. But while an elastic waistband allows the wearer to forgo a belt, many individuals choose not to wear elastic banded trousers. Thus, it would be advantageous for a pants closure device for belted trousers to allow the wearer to adjust belt system once, and to not have to reattach and readjust the belt each time the fly is opened.
The pants closure of the present invention allows the wearer to adjust a belt system once according to preference, then undo and re-do the fly on the pants multiple times without ever having to readjust the belt. The invention is built into pants having traditional construction, and utilizes a belt that is fixed at one end on one flap of the fly panel. The belt extends around the waist of the pants and the opposite free end of the belt is connected at the opposite flap of the fly panel. The free end of the belt is connected to the opposite flap with an adjustment mechanism that allows for selective tensioning of the belt. Because the belt does not span the two fly panels, the fly may be opened and closed multiple times while allowing the adjustment of the belt to stay the same.